and they’re usually not worth reading.
Well, yeah. That’s why they’re in Great Debates. If they were resolved, they’d be in MPSIMS.
I think this has come up before; isn’t it they way in which the subject of a formal debates is properly stated?
I’ll see if I can find the previous thread once I can search again
Yes, it is. The moderator states the topic with: “Resolved: blah blah blah.” I don’t know why it’s done that way, but it is, so a lot of people make thread titles to match.
Well, since this IMHO: it’s arrogant, stupid and inaccurate.
Perhaps so, but it’s time-honored arrogance, stupidity, and inaccuracy. The Oxford Union does it, for example: http://www.oxford-union.org
No, it’s not. It stands for “Be it resolved” – the subjunctive mood, not the indicative. In other words, “We think we should resolve that this is the case,” and it applies to what the pro side is arguing.
It’s a good litmus test.
Why don’t they just use “Resolve: blah blah”, which carries the same meaning, instead of abbreviating a phrase in such a way as to confuse outsiders?
An acid remark, but, true…I just had to say it.
Because they were elaborate and formal and didn’t give a shit about confusing outsiders.
It’s irony. (Or whatever word we’re supposed to use instead of “irony” because most of us can’t remember the proper definition.)
For the same reason any other quirk of formality or tradition becomes a fixture: to draw a circle around a particular context (presumably rarefied, at least to the participants). It’s not just two guys arguing, it’s a formal debate.
By analogy, why is the voting in the US Senate done with “Yea” and “Nay”, archaic forms of “Yes” and “No”? It’s not to confuse the schoolkids who pass through the building and ask “why are they saying YAY!”, even if that is a side effect.
Or why two duellists salute each other before commencing, instead of just trying to murder each other at the earliest possible opportunity (such as while the other guy is wasting time saluting).
The resolution is in the form that it would have if it were adopted by the assembly, so you can be very clear about what it is that you are voting for or against. However, the “Resolved: …” form is not the only convention out there: it just seems to be very common in the US. It doesn’t seem to be the form used by the Oxford Union, for example: the page cited by Mr. Excellent has “This House trusts Politicians more than Journalists”, without the word “Resolved:” at the start. The Oxford Union refers to itself as “This House”, which is idiosyncratic to that body (and to others modelling themselves on it) – I don’t think that phrase would be used by a debating society in the US, where the proposition might be “Resolved: That politicians are more to be trusted than journalists.”
Ok, I’d never heard of the phrase, but at least that makes some kind of sense.
Ignorance fought, I guess.
“Resolved” is Lincoln-Douglas style! Maybe we don’t have as many ex-debate club members at the SDMB as I thought, but I thought more people would recognize it around here- I have always been amazed that “Resolved” offends people. I don’t think I have ever seen it used without at least one person complaining.
The reason I’ve never heard of it, is probably that I’m not American. And it does sound offensive, if you read it like it’s written.
If the Oxford Union uses it, it’s an international style.
If you read the thread title and not the post, possibly.
Well, colour me dumb, cos I always assumed, when skimming over the thread titles, that it just meant “Asked and answered, nothing to see here”.
Then as moderator, it’s your duty to cut off people who spend more than 7 minutes on the affirmative case in the OP.
On a more serious note, the rest of the thread isn’t in LD style, so it’s needlessly pretentious to use that for the thread subject. I suspect at least some people do it because that manner of presentation makes their affirmative stance seem authoritative. At least in proper LD debates, the resolution is being chosen and worded by a neutral committee.